1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to static control garments, and more particularly concerns a garment having multiple independent grounding paths from different points of the body to separate grounding terminals and to monitoring devices.
2. Description of Related Art
Electronic components are extremely sensitive to external electrical potentials and may often be subject to static electricity, particularly during manufacture and assembly. Workers involved in manufacture and assembly of electronic components often generate large amounts of static electricity, amounts that are capable of doing serious damage to or effectively destroying the electronic components. Such damage may not be noticed until further steps in the assembly have been completed, until all assembly has been completed, or at times until the components are actually installed in an operating environment. Various articles have been employed to avoid the detrimental and potentially disastrous effects of static electricity generated by manufacturing and assembly workers. Some of the traditional articles for eliminating static electricity have included grounded wrist straps, grounded smocks, and grounded heel connections. Some anti-static devices, to ensure operability of the grounding of the worker, have employed redundant grounding, utilizing a single wrist strap or band having two separate sections, each of which, on the same wrist band, separately contacts the wearer's wrist and is separately connected to a grounding circuit. The wrist band is an additional item that must be connected and applied to the worker each time that a work period commences. The discomfort and inconvenience of the wrist band and attached grounding cord may tend to encourage some workers to omit the device entirely, thus increasing the danger of static electricity damage to the components being worked on.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a static control garment that avoids or minimizes the above-mentioned, and other problems.